White Sox 2B Beckham leaves with left wrist issue

Chicago White Sox second baseman Gordon Beckham's injured left wrist was hurting him even while he simply stood still in the clubhouse Tuesday night.

It's not clear how long he might be out of the lineup.

Beckham left in the third inning of what turned out to be Chicago's 8-7 loss to the Washington Nationals, who got homers from Adam LaRoche, Jayson Werth and Ian Desmond off White Sox starter Jake Peavy.

After the game, Chicago manager Robin Ventura said he expected to have Jeff Keppinger move over from third base to fill in at second for Beckham on Wednesday, while using Conor Gillaspie at third.

"It's going to take a couple of days," Beckham said. "It hurts now just standing here."

While he was batting in the second inning, he fouled off a pitch - "and knew something was wrong," Beckham explained.

"I stepped out just to take a (practice) swing, kind of realized it wasn't going to be a good swing," he added.

He struck out, played the bottom half of the second in the field, then departed in the third. Angel Sanchez replaced him.

"I've been icing it the last four hours," Beckham said later.

He said X-rays showed "no structural damage; there's no break, there's no nothing. Just some pain, obviously or I wouldn't have come out of the game."

For the Nationals, LaRoche ended an 0-for-15 start to the season by going deep in consecutive at-bats. Washington has 10 homers in its past three games.

"We've got a really balanced lineup. That's something that we have that most teams don't. It's tough on matchups. It's tough on pitchers, really," Werth said. "There's not really an easy spot in our lineup."

He and LaRoche each hit a two-run shot off Peavy (1-1) in the sixth, an inning after Desmond went deep.

LaRoche added a solo homer in the eighth off Matt Thornton, Chicago's fifth pitcher. LaRoche had missed the previous two games with a back muscle problem.

"You get into the second week of the season," LaRoche said, "that's never a good feeling to look up there and not have a hit."

Said Nationals manager Davey Johnson: "I wasn't worried about him."

Werth also tacked on an RBI single off Matt Lindstrom for an unearned insurance run in the seventh, part of a stretch in which the Nationals scored in each of their last five innings. That allowed Washington to hold on even though Alex Rios took closer Rafael Soriano deep for a two-run shot with two outs in the ninth. Soriano got Paul Konerko - who homered earlier - to fly out to end it and record his third save in four chances.

"Wasn't pretty," Johnson said. "Whew."

Craig Stammen (2-0) got the win despite allowing a run and three hits in the sixth.

Desmond connected off Peavy leading off the fifth on a humid evening with the first-pitch temperature at 81 degrees.

"That's a good lineup and they're going to work you," Peavy said. "It was hot and humid. I mean, I was pouring sweat, losing a lot of fluid and was going through hydration stuff."

With the score 2-all, Denard Span started the sixth with a double. That's when Peavy got a mound visit from bullpen coach Bobby Thigpen, filling in for pitching coach Don Cooper, who missed the game because he went to the hospital with a stomach illness.

Thigpen returned to the dugout, and Werth promptly sent Peavy's next pitch to left for his third homer.

Peavy struck out Harper, but walked Ryan Zimmerman, bringing up LaRoche, who hit a 1-1 pitch near the 402-foot sign in straightaway center to make it 6-2.

"Ran out of gas and didn't have much there," said Peavy, who gave up six runs and nine hits in 5 1-3 innings. "Jayson Werth kind of knew what we talked about there on the mound. That pitch wasn't bad and he looked to do damage, and not hit the ball the other way, and he got us. I didn't have much there for LaRoche and he put a good swing on it."

Konerko answered for the White Sox, hitting a three-run homer off Tyler Clippard in the seventh to pull Chicago to 6-5.

But the Nationals kept adding runs.

NOTES: With Thigpen filling in for Cooper, bullpen catcher Mark Salas handled Thigpen's duties. ... With no DH in an NL park, and a lefty starter on the mound for Washington, White Sox slugger Adam Dunn was out of the lineup - a rest day he didn't really want. Asked about the different DH rules in baseball's two leagues, Dunn said: "I do have an opinion. But I'd like to keep it to myself, because I like my job." He was on deck when the game ended.